As Barack Obama prepares to meet China's leader, Hu Jintao, the U.S. needs to find a fresh way of dealing with the new superpower. Here's how to do it

One afternoon last fall, on an unusually humid day in Beijing, the center of the city was buzzing as teams of designers, soldiers and Communist Party officials finalized preparations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The event would be broadcast nationwide to one of those billion-person audiences only China can deliver. The party had planned a parade with fighter-jet flyovers, missiles that would roll along Eternal Peace Street and the once-a-decade ritual in which the top leader dons a Mao suit, stands in the open sunroof of a 1950s-style limousine and is...